The road usage fee proposed in HB621 is not to “target” fuel-efficient cars in New Hampshire. It is to ensure that, as we transition to an energy-efficient driving future, all cars on our roads pay something near their share of the cost of maintaining them. Without this, we will have to develop hover cars, or retreat to horse and buggy. The current situation is unsustainable, and the New Hampshire Public Works and Ways and Means committees have been struggling with what to do for 15 years. Fuel-efficiency is one thing. Maintaining the roads we drive on is another.
We have done temporary fixes for a decade: $35 registration surcharge, federal stimulus money, and sale of an orphaned part of the freeway to the turnpike system. We are out of one-time fixes, and for many years have been failing to meet repaving schedules, condemning lesser state roads to having potholes filled. The state money we raise is multiplied nine times for interstates by the feds, and there’s a lesser match for regional corridors, so they get priority.
When we transfer any money from the general fund for roads it comes out of alternatives such as Meals on Wheels, opioid treatment and prevention, undermanned prisons and other underfunded essentials.
A major problem caused by poorly maintained roads is the increasing impact on our working poor — the Wal-Mart clerk, the housecleaner, perhaps your snowplower, and many other people without whom you cannot maintain your lifestyle. Many low-wage workers have to live 15-40 miles away from their jobs to find affordable housing. They cannot afford the cost of new vehicles, so they buy the old gas-guzzlers. They struggle to find cash to pay high car repair bills, especially when they live on roads that have dropped from the maintenance list. And they pay a lot more gas tax than the rest of us.
In 1923, the New Hampshire road toll was enacted to pay for building and maintaining the public highways of the state. A 1938 constitutional amendment created the highway fund, protecting all revenues derived from highways from use for any other purpose — and specifically including “the supervision of traffic thereon,” clearly meant in the debates of the time as enforcement of motor vehicle laws. The protected revenues are primarily gas tax (now 52 percent) and vehicle registrations (32 percent). The cost of registration is based on weight, with surcharges for semi-trailers. A Tesla weighs 4,650 pounds, a Prius 3,040, a Hummer 6,600.
This year, to make the budgeted $124 million in gas tax, New Hampshire businesses would have to sell 560 million gallons of gas. From 1991 to 2014, the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks grew from 19.5 mpg to 21.4, but for new cars it grew from 28.4 mpg to 36.4. There are a lot of older cars on the road, and except for antiques, they are mostly owned by people who can’t afford something better. Because we depend on a gas-based tax, we are making them pay more to maintain our roads and bridges than wealthier drivers do.
Alternatives to the gas tax are 1.) an income or sales tax; 2.) a carbon tax; 3.) increasing vehicle registration fees based on weight, 4.) a yearly fee at registration time based on odometer readings, and 5.) the proposed road usage fee. The first is politically impossible (and would be needed for other state services). The second must include a rebate to consumers to alleviate catastrophic effects on businesses and the poor, and would net little for the highways. The third loses to the trucking lobby, whose argument is based on the resulting price increases on almost all our food and other purchases that are trucked in. The fourth has encountered major opposition nationwide from drivers who regularly travel outside their state to shop, work and visit; they insist on paying only for travel within their home state. Large trucks have a cumbersome system that divvies up fuel tax miles from travel across the country: the only way to extend it to all drivers is to install a GPS reporting system in every vehicle, a major privacy issue.
So here’s the road usage fee proposal: The average New Hampshire car travels 12,500 miles per year. The average New Hampshire passenger car gets 22.5 mpg, and thus pays $123.33 in gas tax. Using EPA standards for every model year and model, any car rated at 22.5 mpg or less (adjusted for age) would pay no usage fee. At annual registration, any car rated over that would pay a sliding fee from $7.70-$123.33, to match the baseline car’s contribution. An all-electric Tesla pays $123.33. The new 43 mpg-rated car pays $58.80, a fee that declines with age. The 33 mpg-rated car pays $39.24, and the 23 mpg car $7.70. Each of these cars is presumed to pay the rest of its share of the common burden of road maintenance through the gas tax. Trying to evaluate the particular circumstances of every driver and car would be exorbitantly expensive and invasive.
The bill was tabled to allow it to come back in final shape next year. The bottom line is that we need a system to get us to the new world of efficient cars without destroying the roads they have to drive on.
Rep. Susan Almy, a Democrat represents Grafton District 13. She lives in Lebanon.